Chore Cards for Mom

Last week I joined Mama Jenn to complete a mission by the end of September. You can see my post about it here. Her mission (which you can read about by clicking the Mama Jenn link in the first sentence) was to get back to using her SHE cards. Well, as you know my mission is to give up my nap, but her mission got me thinking.

I have ready Sidetracked Home Executive, I have done Flylady before as well. So I decided to do a simplified version of the cards.

Here is what I did.

I have a 2 blue cards that I do everyday. They are my morning routine and my evening routine.

Each red card is a room our house, except I lumped the bathrooms all together onto one card.  Which ever card I pick, for instance living room, means that I will spend approximately 30 minutes working in the living room, straightening, organizing, cleaning, whatever needs to be done.

I have green cards, these are organizing missions. They each take about 15 minutes. For example, one says pick a drawer or two and spend 15 minutes cleaning it out/organizing it.

I also have purple cards. These, again, are approximately 15 min chores as well.  These include vacuuming upstairs, downstairs, mopping the kitchen, cleaning out my car, and changing the sheets in the house.

 

What makes it fun is that each day I randomly select 1 red card, 1 blue card and 1 green card. I don’t know what they are going to be, which adds a bit of excitement to the cleaning for the day. Once I have used one of the cards I put it face down so I know I have done that one already. When each red card (for example) is done, I shuffle and start again the next day.

 

Here is a pdf of my cards. Feel free to use what I have. Check it out here.

In the end, I have my morning and evening routine, 1 30 min task (which cleans a room), 1 15 min organizational task, and 1 15 min cleaning chore.

So far I am loving it!

Mama’s Mission, September

I have decided to join a brand new blog carnival. It is hosted by Mama Jenn.

For this carnival you set a goal and try to accomplish it. If by the end of the month you have, you get a mission accomplished button.

My goal this month is to once and for all GIVE UP THE NAP. No not my kids……ME!

I have had the luxury of having both boys be great nappers. So for the past 4 years I have had a nap in the afternoon, while they sleep. I don’t mean just lying down. I don’t mean a 20 minute cat nap.

I am talking about a get in your pajamas, get in bed, and fall fast asleep for a good 2 hours…NAP!

Obviously it affects my sleep at night. Not to mention that my 4.5 year old no longer naps so he is spending too much time in his room playing/watching tv/bouncing off the walls.

So my goal is to give up the nap. I will still have 1 hour of quiet time per day, while Monkey has his quiet time, and Alligator sleeps. During this time I will read, or play on the computer or watch TV, but not sleep.

Then I would like to get up and have some one-on-one time with Monkey. He needs it, and so do I.

I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes.

Tiny Talk Tuesday

I have decided to join up for the blog carnival of Tiny Talk Tuesday. Click the picture above to see what others are saying…

 

Monkey: Mommy, can I have some dog candy in a bowl. ( our little dog takes a medication every day, so we give it to him in a junior mint, and the junior mint is what monkey wanted).

 

Mommy: Monkey I need to talk to you

Monkey: Mommy, what more could you possibly want?

 

Mommy: Monkey come on and eat your oatmeal.

Monkey: I want emm-nmm-nmms (M&Ms)

Mommy: You need to have something healthy for breakfast.

Moneky: I don’t like healthy food!

Good News!

We received some very good news today.

Alligator has been having both speech and physical therapy through our local early intervention. Today was the first part of his yearly review.

 

The yearly review pretty much entails having him assessed in all areas again. Well, according to our speech therapist, he has met all his goals. Not only that, but he is currently caught up to his peers. YAY!!!!!

I also know that Alligator is also caught up in his gross motor (but he hasn’t officially been evaluated, that will take place next week.)

 

The scary part of this is that it means we probably no longer need speech therapy or physical therapy. I love the idea that he has caught up. I am thrilled, however it is also a little scary. I’ll know more in the coming weeks.

Playroom cleaned out!

Yes, I am back to blogging.

 

I spent the good part of this morning organizing the play room. See this post for semi-before pictures.

 

Here is all the garbage and good-will bags. There were just so many toys the boys are too old for now. 3 Wal-mart bags worth of give-aways, and 2 bags of trash.

 

This is a shelf that I am using to put Alligators toys on. That way he can see them and play with them as he chooses.(You can see some of the trash bags still, sorry!)

I also have a bin of books for him to look at.

Starting from the left you can see (on the floor) 2 more bins of books. Then our toy storage. It is all organized. So everything has a home now. You can also see the train table and our leapfrog table toy.

 

 

Here is our art corner. and our rocking horses. I also have a map of the world up. The second picture below shows a little more of that area. It also show a new toy we got at a consignment shop. You feed the pelican the food and it shows up in his tummy. I thought that would be a good standing up toy for Alligator.

I am so excited to finally have this room organized so we can enjoy it, and actually use it to play in!